Star Wars Youth: Or, The Kids Are Alright
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| Title: | Star Wars Youth: Or, The Kids Are Alright |
| Creator: | James Addams |
| Date(s): | autumn 1997 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Wars |
| Topic: | |
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| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Star Wars Youth: Or, The Kids Are Alright is an essay by James Addams in Blue Harvest #13.
Excerpts
I'm guessing most of you reading this zine fall in between the ages of 18 and 30. I figure some of you may be a bit younger or a bit older. Okay, maybe a lot older. In any case, we've all noticed how in recent times SW has attracted a young audience a second time around. A good number of the people who were in line to see the Special Editions were teenagers. Parents brought their grade-schoolers. Within weeks the small fry were clambering for action figures and stomping about in their spiffy Darth Vader sneakers.
I m also impressed by the teens who have been so active in the fandom. In fact some of the most hardcore SW fans I have ever met are like 15 or 16 years old, that generation of kids who (up until last winter) had seen the trilogy only on their t.v. screens. These young people have formed clubs written and shared fan stories, and established web sites. One of my favorite Leia web pages is run by a 16-year-old high school student. I couldn't even run a computer when I was that age!
A younger fan may not know as much trivia about SW as someone who has been a fan for 20 years, but come on! That's because they haven't lived as long as you have. Instead of sneering at these kids, we ought to remember this slogan oft repeated in the African American community: "Each one, teach one." Knowledge is meant to be shared.
Other older fons sometimes question young fans' integrity. Oh please! What were most or you doing when you were in your teens? You were probably hiding your Death Star playset and pinning a Playboy centerfold over your Revenge of the Jedi poster whenever your "cool" friends were coming over to your house. Today's young fans not only proudly display their action figure collection, they get Boba Fett tattoos on their heinies to impress their girlfriends.
To be blunt, us twenty/thirty somethings shouldn't hoq SW, particularly since we re always dissing baby boomers for being the culrural imperialists that they are. SW lives only so long as it keeps attracting new fans; if it's stuck as part of only one generation's identity, it ages and dies along with that generation. Sure we care about the effect new fans will have on the random and of course we will always have the first-hand experience of the glory years of 1977-1983 while our youthful counterparts never will. But let's give them a break. With all of the horror stories in the news about American youth troubled with broken homes, violence, drugs, and premature sex, it's great to know there are kids involved with something positive. So a tip of the lightsaber to all of the young Jedi Knights out there — you guys are the Future of fandom, the ones to carry on the torch while we're being spoonfed in the old folks home. Keep your head up and MTBWY!